Wallace Stevens

“They will get it straight one day at the Sorbonne.We shall return at twilight from the lecturePleased that the irrational is rational”

“The Snow Man"One must have a mind of winterTo regard the frost and the boughsOf the pine-trees crusted with snow;And have been cold a long timeTo behold the junipers shagged with ice,The spruces rough in the distant glitterOf the January sun; and not to thinkOf any misery in the sound of the wind,In the sound of a few leaves,Which is the sound of the landFull of the same windThat is blowing in the same bare placeFor the listener, who listens in the snow,And, nothing himself, beholdsNothing that is not there and the nothing that is.Wallace Stevens, The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens. (Vintage; Reissue edition February 19, 1990)”

“the lion sleeps in the sun.its nose on its paws.it can kill a man.”

“The most beautiful thing in the world is, of course, the world itself.”

“We must endure our thoughts all night, until the bright obvious stands motionless in cold.”

“From this the poem springs: that we live in a place That is not our own and, much more, not ourselves And hard it is in spite of blazoned days.”

“Reality is the beginning not the end,Naked Alpha, not the hierophant Omega, Of dense investiture, with luminous vassals.”

“They said, "You have a blue guitar, you do not play things as they are." The man replied, "Things as they are are changed upon the blue guitar.”

“Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird"IAmong twenty snowy mountains, The only moving thing Was the eye of the blackbird. III was of three minds, Like a tree In which there are three blackbirds. IIIThe blackbird whirled in the autumn winds. It was a small part of the pantomime. IVA man and a woman Are one. A man and a woman and a blackbird Are one. VI do not know which to prefer, The beauty of inflections Or the beauty of innuendoes, The blackbird whistling Or just after. VIIcicles filled the long window With barbaric glass. The shadow of the blackbird Crossed it, to and fro. The mood Traced in the shadow An indecipherable cause. VIIO thin men of Haddam, Why do you imagine golden birds? Do you not see how the blackbird Walks around the feet Of the women about you? VIIII know noble accents And lucid, inescapable rhythms; But I know, too, That the blackbird is involved In what I know. IXWhen the blackbird flew out of sight, It marked the edge Of one of many circles. XAt the sight of blackbirds Flying in a green light, Even the bawds of euphony Would cry out sharply. XIHe rode over Connecticut In a glass coach. Once, a fear pierced him, In that he mistook The shadow of his equipage For blackbirds. XIIThe river is moving. The blackbird must be flying. XIIIIt was evening all afternoon. It was snowing And it was going to snow. The blackbird sat In the cedar-limbs.”

“I still feel the need of some imperishable bliss.”

“Sigh for me, night-wind, in the noisy leaves of the oak. / I am tired. Sleep for me, heaven over the hill. / Shout for me, loudly and loudly, joyful sun, when you rise.”

“After the final no there comes a yes / And on that yes the future world depends.”

“It is necessary to any originality to have the courage to be an amateur.”

“Man is an eternal sophomore.”

“Reality is a cliché from which we escape by metaphor.”

“I know noble accentsAnd lucid, inescapable rhythms;But I know, too,That the blackbird is involvedIn what I know.”

“The imagination is man's power over nature.”

“I was the world in which I walked, and what I sawOr heard or felt came not but from myself;And there I found myself more truly and more strange.”

“A poem is a meteor.”

“Of the Surface of ThingsIn my room, the world is beyond my understanding;But when I walk I see that it consists of three or fourHills and a cloud.”

“The fire burns as the novel taught it how.”

“A change of style is a change of meaning.”

“A poet looks at the world the way a man looks at a woman.”

“Tras el ultimo "NO" viene un "sí". Y de ese sí depende el porvenir del mundo.”

“The yellow glistens.It glistens with various yellows,Citrons, oranges and greensFlowering over the skin.”

“There is nothing in life except what one thinks of it.”

“Thought tends to collect in pools.”

“Reality Is an Activity of the Most August Imagination.”

“If sex were all, then every trembling handCould make us squeak, like dolls, the wished-for words.”

“The great poems of heaven and hell have been written and the great poem of earth remains to be written.”

“The river is moving. The blackbird must be flying.”

“The Idea of Order at Key WestShe sang beyond the genius of the sea.The water never formed to mind or voice,Like a body wholly body, flutteringIts empty sleeves; and yet its mimic motionMade constant cry, caused constantly a cry,That was not ours although we understood,Inhuman, of the veritable ocean.The sea was not a mask. No more was she.The song and water were not medleyed soundEven if what she sang was what she heard,Since what she sang was uttered word by word.It may be that in all her phrases stirredThe grinding water and the gasping wind;But it was she and not the sea we heard.For she was the maker of the song she sang.The ever-hooded, tragic-gestured seaWas merely a place by which she walked to sing.Whose spirit is this? we said, because we knewIt was the spirit that we sought and knewThat we should ask this often as she sang.If it was only the dark voice of the seaThat rose, or even colored by many waves;If it was only the outer voice of skyAnd cloud, of the sunken coral water-walled,However clear, it would have been deep air,The heaving speech of air, a summer soundRepeated in a summer without endAnd sound alone. But it was more than that,More even than her voice, and ours, amongThe meaningless plungings of water and the wind,Theatrical distances, bronze shadows heapedOn high horizons, mountainous atmospheresOf sky and sea. It was her voice that madeThe sky acutest at its vanishing.She measured to the hour its solitude.She was the single artificer of the worldIn which she sang. And when she sang, the sea,Whatever self it had, became the selfThat was her song, for she was the maker. Then we,As we beheld her striding there alone,Knew that there never was a world for herExcept the one she sang and, singing, made.Ramon Fernandez, tell me, if you know,Why, when the singing ended and we turnedToward the town, tell why the glassy lights,The lights in the fishing boats at anchor there,As the night descended, tilting in the air,Mastered the night and portioned out the sea,Fixing emblazoned zones and fiery poles,Arranging, deepening, enchanting night.Oh! Blessed rage for order, pale Ramon,The maker's rage to order words of the sea,Words of the fragrant portals, dimly-starred,And of ourselves and of our origins,In ghostlier demarcations, keener sounds”

“The way through the worldIs more difficult to find than the way beyond it.”

“The House Was Quiet and the World Was CalmThe house was quiet and the world was calm. The reader became the book; and summer night Was like the conscious being of the book. The house was quiet and the world was calm. The words were spoken as if there was no book, Except that the reader leaned above the page, Wanted to lean, wanted much to be The scholar to whom his book is true, to whom The summer night is like a perfection of thought. The house was quiet because it had to be. The quiet was part of the meaning, part of the mind: The access of perfection to the page. And the world was calm. The truth in a calm world, In which there is no other meaning, itself Is calm, itself is summer and night, itself Is the reader leaning late and reading there.”

“... unreal things have a reality of their own, in poetry as elsewhere.”

“The imagination loses vitality as it ceases to adhere to what is real.”

“One cannot spend one's time in being modern when there are so many more important things to be.”

“Next to love is the desire for love.”

“The reader became the book; and summer nightWas like the conscious being of the book.”

“She says, "But in contentment I still feelThe need for imperishable bliss."Death is the mother of beauty; hence from her,Alone, shall come fulfillment to our dreamsAnd our desires.Is there no change of death in paradise?Does ripe fruit never fall? or do the boughsHang always heavy in that perfect sky,Unchanging, yet so like our perishing earth,With rivers like our own that seek for seasThey never find, the same receding shoresThat never touch with inarticulate pang?”

“I certainly do not exist from nine to six, when I am at the office.”

“Human nature is like water. It takes the shape of its container.”

“The Emperor of Ice-Cream Call the roller of big cigars,The muscular one, and bid him whip In kitchen cups concupiscent curds. Let the wenches dawdle in such dress As they are used to wear, and let the boys Bring flowers in last month's newspapers. Let be be finale of seem. The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream. Take from the dresser of deal, Lacking the three glass knobs, that sheet On which she embroidered fantails once And spread it so as to cover her face. If her horny feet protrude, they come To show how cold she is, and dumb. Let the lamp affix its beam. The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.”

“The imperfect is our paradise.”

“The palm stands on the edge of space.The wind moves slowly in the branches.The bird's fire-fangled feathers dangle down.”

“God and the imagination are one.”

“There is no wing like meaning”

“Death is the mother of beauty; hence from her,Alone, shall come fulfillment to our dreamsAnd our desires.”

“One must have a mind of winter.”

“Children picking up our bonesWill never know that these were onceAs quick as foxes on the hill;”